WEST DES MOINES, IA. — Sometime around 10 p.m. on Tuesday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry sat down with his wife, family members and a small group of advisers in consultant Joe Allbaugh’s hotel room to have a conversation, said campaign spokesman Ray Sullivan.

The group of six or seven people phoned Dave Carney, Perry’s longtime Texas adviser, Sullivan said, and partook in “a bunch of talking and a bunch of writing.”

In a downstairs ballroom of the Sheraton West Des Moines, Perry supporters and volunteers from more than 30 states stared at an empty stage and a screen looping Perry’s video ads. They were waiting for their candidate.

At about 10:50 p.m., he emerged.

Perry said at a Sioux City debate last month that he wanted to defy expectations, to become the Tim Tebow of the Iowa caucuses. In Perry’s introduction, his Iowa co-chair Bob Haus said that sometimes even if you’re Tebow, you still “get a little bit of grass in your helmet.”

That grass for Perry was enough to cancel campaign stops scheduled for today in South Carolina, home of the third contest in the caucus and primary season. For a candidate who had won every political office he ever sought, the caucuses offered the painful experience of a loss.

“But with the voters’ decision tonight in Iowa, I decided to return to Texas,” Perry said, “assess the results of tonight’s caucus, determine whether there is a path forward for myself in this race.”

Sullivan said the decision on whether Perry’s campaign will move forward will depend on a calculus of the Iowa results, available resources and a campaign analysis of Perry’s odds in South Carolina.

“I suspect the earliest that we will speak further on the subject is Thursday,” he said.

Sullivan wouldn’t comment on whether the caucus results, Perry’s plummet in the polls last fall or some combination of the two drove home his decision to fly back to Austin today and reassess.

Perry’s second in command in Texas, Lt. Gov. David Dewurst, suggested that maybe Perry entered the race too soon after a back surgery over the summer.

“As I sat with him on the bus the last three days, in retrospect, maybe he should have waited a little longer,” said Dewurst. “He didn’t feel good.”

In his remarks Tuesday night, Perry framed the campaign as about something bigger than himself.

“And this campaign’s never been about me,” he said. “It’s about a movement of Americans who see our country that’s really not on the track that most of us want it to be on.”

With his last words, Perry shifted the spotlight from America at large to the Lone Star state he’s served for more than 10 years. Perry was going home.

“I want to tell you there has been no greater joy in my life than to be able to share with the people of Iowa and this country that there is a model to take this country forward,” he said, “and it is in the great state of Texas.”